This Russian banking regulator was found hiding almost 100 million dollars,
all from bribes he was taking! But is taking bribes worse than running a fake charity,
a story that we’ll discuss later in this video?
5 - Mr. Russia Kirill Cherkalin
Former Lieutenant Colonel Kirill Cherkalin was a financial regulator and he was caught
hiding various currencies in cash of at least $125 million dollars! He used his ties to the
country's Federal Security Service, or FSB, to skim money off the top, take bribes, and funnel
illicit cash into his and his partners' pockets. Reports say his crime spree ran from 2013 to 2015.
FSB Academy
Cherkalin is no stranger to how corrupt Russian authorities work; after being raised by former
members of the infamous KGB, 11. After graduating from the FSB Academy in Moscow, he immediately
achieved a position of power in Department K, the arm of the FSB that handles financial matters.
It didn't take him long to rise to the top and begin heading up the Department.
During this time, Russian banks and worldwide economies were still reeling from the major
housing and investment crash of 2008. This, combined with the buildup and eventual smaller
crash in 2014, kept financial regulators busy. Cherkalin had plenty of time to build power
behind the scenes. As his influence grew, so did the ways he could scrape cash from his endeavors.
Russian Banking
Russian banks were finding creative ways to steal depositors' and investors' money and
even drain federal funds directed at fixing problems. The Russian government responded
by dismantling nearly half of the country's banking industry.
The FSB and the Bank of Russia worked quickly to clear assets on those banks and get payouts
out to depositors when their banks fell. Some of those banks, however, received bailouts and stayed
afloat a bit longer. In some cases, corrupt bankers could avoid prison without having
to escape abroad, as many were doing. Cherkalin was a key figure in deciding who got bailed out,
who went to jail, and which banks were dismantled. You can probably already see where this is going.
Cherkalin, like many others, saw an opportunity here. Taking bribes from doomed bankers was
commonplace, and Cherkalin's position gave him ample opportunity to indulge. In many cases,
he worked with greasy-palmed bankers and allies in his Department to swap out valuable assets with
less valuable ones and funnel money overseas, where it was safe from the Kremlin's eyes.
Defunct banks obtained temporary funding to give Cherkalin time to pull off his schemes.
Cherkalin's gains were primarily kept as cash and assets, from valuables to foreign currency,
in several locations. He kept about $200,000 in his car, for example. Meanwhile,
he kept over $125 million in an apartment listed under his sister's name, Anastasia Cherkalina
https://www.imago-images.com/bild/st/0093532861/s.jpg and https://ibb.co/rwf8qr9 other amounts were
kept around other family members, including his parents. He told those whose homes he
hid money in that the cash was related to his job and didn't explain any further.
Damage
It's hard to place a dollar amount on the damage, but the Bank of Russia had to drain
far more of its holdings than planned. They had to pay off depositors and try to right the ship
on closing banks. This resulted in an extra burden on Russia's federal banking reserves,
which were already stretched thin just because of what was happening in the country and its
financial market. Even in a market saturated with corruption, Cherkalin beat the record held by
Dmitry Zakharchenko, a former anti-corruption official who was
busted in 2016 to the coincidental number of $125 million dollars as well.
Cherkalin was caught, along with a few others in the department managing similar operations,
back in 2019. As far as white-collar arrests go, this one got a little wild;
reports say that the fight with police left one of the conspirators with a broken arm.
During Cherkalin's lengthy trial, he implicated the Deposit Insurance Agency's Valery Miroshnikov,
who held several offices and ultimately answered to the organization's director.
According to Cherkalin, most of his cash and valuables belonged to Miroshnikov.
Other bankers corroborated his involvement but had
to flee Russia since they were also caught up in the scheme.
Testimony from various parties in the case indicates that Miroshnikov
often appointed his own people to run target banks as representatives while they were either cleared
out and shut down or pumped full of federal cash and revitalized. According to reports, Miroshnikov
caught wind of Cherkalin's arrest and left Russia in a hurry, making it difficult to pinpoint his
involvement and just how great the damage was. The hasty escape tells us all we need to know.
As for Cherkalin, he was sentenced to seven years in federal prison.
This sentence was eventually shortened to five years in light of his time in detention during
his trial. On top of the prison time, Cherkalin was stripped of his military rank and honors
and banned from holding any law enforcement position for three years after his release.
Asset seizures in the case amounted to approximately $80 million.
Finally, he was ordered to directly pay back only a tiny part of what he was caught holding,
the rough equivalent of $4.2 million a pop for two indirect victims of his crimes.
Cherkalin's family also felt some heat for their involvement. Most prominently,
an apartment that Cherkalin's father swears was bought with his own money
was seized under suspicion that his son may have paid for it. Notably,
his sister testified that he never gave her any material aid and didn’t suffer the same penalty.
4 - Accounts Receivable Lisa Trison
Common sense holds that a caught criminal won't repeat the same crime while out on bail,
but that truth apparently didn't hold for mom and serial fraudster Lisa Trison! Between her
original crime spree, time on bail, and parole period, the mother of one
socked away over $300,000 from businesses dumb enough to hire her as a bookkeeper. The money
was blown on luxuries such as designer handbags, travel, illegal substances, and slot machines.
Accounts Receivable The mom from Torquay started scamming when she got
a job in accounts receivable at Advance Records Management, a firm in Australia. Before taking the
job, she already had a long criminal record that was full of small financial offenses. You would
think that the hiring manager would have caught that to keep her from working in accounting!
Trison was caught altering documents in the past and was found in this case to be using
other people's background checks, but with her own personal information edited in.
Advance Records Management
When Trison got on board with Advance Records Management in 2018, she began her illegal
activities immediately. It only took her four months to get sacked for poor performance,
but that was all the time she needed. By stirring up the records with all sorts of inconsistent and
misleading information, she hid the fact that she was lifting tens of thousands from the business.
The first hint of suspicion came a few days into her new job.
She was accused of manipulating the refund process to route $2,500 bucks
into her account. But she cooked the books so well that nobody could prove anything.
Refund fraud was only part of the scheme, though. Using false transactions, hiding her tracks,
and at one point even taking money from the boss' personal account,
she funneled over $95,000 thousand dollars to herself. She only got caught after she
was fired in November 2018. A simple audit revealed her crimes, and she was prosecuted.
Barwon Timber
Trison was busted, but that was far from the end of her grand plan. When February rolled around,
she confessed her crime in detail. She subsequently posted bail and
did the exact same scheme at Barwon Timber, another accounting firm. False transactions,
manipulated refunds, fudged records, and more tricks eventually saw her once again
fired and charged after she was caught making off with cash!
The baffling part here is that she committed the same crime while out on bail, but of course,
she was able to post bail again, probably with stolen money. The companies that hired
her trusted the falsified background checks that Trison had provided rather than checking
into her themselves. Some simple due diligence would have prevented the second and third scams.
Geelong Arts Center
For her third time, her victim of choice was the Geelong Arts Center,
where she was employed when the story broke in outlets such as the Daily Mail. Somehow,
before the cycle could play out a third time, Trison stole over $200,000 thousand dollars from
her new employer! But before April of 2020 came around, she found herself out of a job and in a
courtroom. This time, throwing some dirty cash around wouldn't be enough to buy her freedom.
Busted
It was game over for Trison. She couldn't catch a break from the long arm of the law anymore.
She rejected the Magistrate's initial plea bargain offer and contested the ruling.
That didn't end well for her.
Her lawyer pushed the narrative that his client was an addict and needed help,
asking for a short sentence with strings attached to aid her treatment. The prosecution, meanwhile,
pushed back with eyes on the high-end lifestyle she was funding for herself with the stolen money.
Ultimately, she was sentenced to a minimum of four and a half years
before becoming eligible for parole. Only time will tell if she'll end up in court again.
3 - Dodging Bullets
Shania Schwerin Shania Schwerin stole $187,000 from
her employer without ending up in jail somehow! Schwerin started with Neil's Parts, a chain auto
parts store, in 2019. She was brought on as a bookkeeper and used the job to access systems
that would allow her to skim money over time. Her scam involved two different approaches.
The first piece of the puzzle was the company's EFTPOS machine. If you've been to a store and used
a credit card within the last couple of decades, you've used one of these machines. They can be
programmed with various options and parameters, chief among those being where payments go.
Schwerin messed with the shop's EFTPOS system, directing it to drop
money from refunds into her personal bank account instead of returning the funds to
customers. During her nine months employed, she pulled this simple grift a stunning 108
times. The transactions averaged over $1,000 each, given how much money she stole.
Stopping at that step would have gotten Schwerin caught immediately,
so she went on to cover her tracks. For each transaction she handled fraudulently,
she went into the company's record-keeping system and edited the transactions to appear
genuine. With the customers' account information available from their original payment,
she wasn't exactly forced to move heaven and earth to accomplish this.
As far as anybody in the company could tell, all was as it should have been.
It took them nine months to catch on, finally firing Schwerin and bringing charges in March
2020. Police interviews with staff concluded that all refund transactions had to be
greenlit by branch managers companywide, making her scam seem that much bolder.
The most likely culprit had to have been customer complaints; after all,
customers who didn't receive their refunds would know something was a little off.
Busted
When Schwerin was busted, she pleaded guilty to the charges set before her,
which consisted of using deceptive means for financial gain. With many
material facts still in the air, the court scheduled a Disputed Facts Hearing. This is
where the court figures out precisely what happened and what Schwerin confessed to.
That hearing fell through in May of 2020. Schwerin's party told the
court that the stress of the case had caused her to become depressed,
and she was thus not fit to stand trial at that time. Judge Dina Yehia was having none of it,
and decided to move forward without the recommended hearing.
Schwerin probably expected jail time, but that's not what happened. Along with 250
hours of community service and being forced to pay back $10,000 to her former employer,
she was put under an intensive correction order. She never spent a day in jail.
This is somewhat like probation but more customizable; the bare minimum
rules stipulate that the criminal must let a parole officer in their house when asked,
report for regular check-ins, keep police informed if they move, and follow any reasonable
orders. More conditions can be added on a case-by-case basis.
It's worth noting that a second hearing was scheduled for June of 2021, at which Schwerin
may have been forced to pay back more money to Neil's Parts. Available sources, however,
leave the story at a bit of a cliffhanger. The scam took place over nine months, and she
ultimately was sentenced to community service and an intensive corrections order spanning two years.
2 - The Vacation Mom Sarah Armstrong
Sarah Armstrong of Wokingham, Berkshire, destroyed her former employer by stealing
£89,000, then went on to lie and brag while her ex-colleagues struggled to rebuild. The mom of two
spent five years with ETZ Technologies before her big scam, and its devastating effects came
into play. During that time, she made her way to Head of Operations, a high paying position.
Siphoning
Armstrong's scam wasn't exactly groundbreaking. Like a few others on this list, she handled
accounts receivable for her employer, among many other things. As Head of Operations,
she was free to figure out how to hide her activities.
Keeping her colleagues in the dark, she began siphoning payments meant for the
company into her personal account. This went on from November 2016 to July 2017.
Armstrong's scam caught the company off guard on the heels of a fairly long stint in some highly
trusted positions. Although the amount she made off with was less than her annual salary, how
quickly she made it all happen was enough to cause severe budget shortfalls. ETZ Technologies was
never a huge business, and the blow was more than enough to be considered crippling. Many in the
company were laid off, and those that stuck around were left scrambling to rebuild the business.
While available sources don't say exactly how she was caught, the scam eventually got her fired.
The most likely scenario involves higher-ups trying to figure out where all that money went
and her virtual fingerprints being all over the system in associated transactions.
Busted
Armstrong was caught and confessed to one count of fraud in March of 2018. The next logical step
would be for her to pay back the stolen money and set things right, but that didn't happen. Instead,
she told the courts that she had already spent all that money and couldn't pay what she owed.
The court had no way of proving or disproving her claim. Rather
than investigating further or looking for other ways to balance the scales,
the court essentially let it go. Armstrong was given a suspended sentence, alongside
125 hours of community service. All she had to pay was a £140 victim surcharge.
Effects
Her former colleagues and superiors were left with a shell of a company to run. A large
chunk of money going missing in such a short time disrupted vital operations and cut into staff pay,
leading to layoffs and other complications.
With everything they were going through, it's safe to say that EZT Technologies' remaining
employees weren't too happy about what happened next. Armstrong took to social media to express
remorse over the crimes and a desire to move on, but her content on the platform abruptly turned.
Just months after winning the court's sympathy by claiming to be flat broke, Armstrong was posting
photos from holidays abroad. She took her daughter along for the ride, hitting Spain and Turkey.
At one point, she even claimed to have partied with football superstar Christiano Ronaldo.
While there was some understandable outrage over the posts, at the time of this video, available
sources haven't said anything about new charges or further court proceedings. Her ex-bosses
vented to the Daily Mail, saying Armstrong made a mockery of justice. With destroyed lives and
a husk of a business in her wake, all signs point to the scammer making a clean getaway.
1 - Save Our Soldiers Charity Work
David Papagavriel and Terence Kelly were no strangers to helping various charities.
When this scam story began in 2013, the two were trustees of Open Doors,
a thrift store entity that helped fund equipment and other concerns for
various charities since 1991. The shop originated in Westcliff-on-Sea, Essex.
Ian Ellis and his son Peter Ellis were heading up Dove Promotions, a small fundraising outfit
in Lancashire. Given its nature, the company was undoubtedly familiar with
working for charities. When the two entities got together in 2013 and created their own charity,
the only people who made any money were the four running the show.
Save Our Soldiers
Given Open Doors' longstanding status in the community, the parties running a fake
charity could have flown under the radar for some time. Instead, the fraudulent 'Save Our
Soldiers' charity imploded in two short years. There are several laws governing how charitable
bodies can raise funds in the UK, and this venture ran in blatant disregard of those laws.
Throughout the two-year scam, random men were brought on board. They were placed in railway
stations and dressed in Save Our Soldiers shirts and camo pants. This created a clear
image of a charity effort aimed at helping veterans in need, and the donations rolled in.
Ultimately, the scammers got themselves caught. Dove Promotions usually operated
well within the law. In this case, they worked under a license that allowed them
to sell merchandise and run raffles to raise money. Planting men to collect
donations from the busy commuter stations fell outside that license.
On two separate occasions, off-duty transit cops ran across the collectors and reported
them to the police. This wasn't enough to convince authorities to take action,
and the scam continued. When an anonymous commuter reached out to the charity to ask some questions,
she was offered a £5 "refund," presumably to keep
her from taking her line of questioning any further or bringing in third parties.
Faking associations with legitimate charities probably didn't help. Record-keeping was far from
meticulous, but courts eventually found that only £14,000 made its way to real charities. Save Our
Soldiers, in turn, claimed association with The Royal British Legion, ABF, The Soldiers' Charity,
and SSAFA, which stands for the Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen and Families Association.
The Royal British Legion made a statement in 2015 categorically denying all of these claims.
Money Trail
Papagavriel paid himself £65,000 pounds, which ended up on the books for Open Doors.
Since this outfit typically posted less than £16,000 per year in annual revenue,
the massive jump to £83,000 in 2014 set off some alarms.
Making matters worse, Papagavriel and Kelly used money that reportedly came from Open Doors to
buy a holiday caravan on Mersea Island. This action would have been less suspicious if they
hadn't involved TripAdvisor and had rent paid directly to Papagavriel's personal account.
Peter Ellis took the lion's share, ending up with over £100,000 between electronic
transfers and other means. Ian, meanwhile, reportedly saw £54,000 fall into his lap.
This is a drop in the bucket compared to the roughly £547,000 that Dove Promotions was found
transferring into various personal accounts. As if all that wasn't enough,
prosecutors in the case later found that Papagavriel's wife was receiving direct
payments from Open Doors in the form of 14 checks averaging about £2,000 each.
Aftermath
Most of the money vanished into thin air. Papagavriel was ordered to pay out
£31,000 in three months or face six months in jail. Meanwhile,
the Ellis duo had to pay back £57,000 whenever possible.
This was about as harsh as it all got. Kelly was given a suspended sentence but had to stick to a 9
PM to 7 AM curfew enforcement for 9 months. Ian shared that fate,
while his son's suspended sentence balanced on 200 hours of unpaid volunteer work. Papagavriel
arguably got the worst deal of the bunch, with 250 unpaid work hours.
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